Abstract
Dispersal represents a key life-history trait with several implications for the fitness of organisms, population dynamics and resilience, local adaptation, meta-population dynamics, range shifting, and biological invasions. Plastic and evolutionary changes of dispersal traits have been intensively studied over the past decades in entomology, in particular in wing-dimorphic insects for which literature reviews are available. Importantly, dispersal polymorphism also exists in wing-monomorphic and wingless insects, and except for butterflies, fewer syntheses are available. In this perspective, by integrating the very latest research in the fast moving field of insect dispersal ecology, this review article provides an overview of our current knowledge of dispersal polymorphism in insects. In a first part, some of the most often used experimental methodologies for the separation of dispersers and residents in wing-monomorphic and wingless insects are presented. Then, the existing knowledge on the morphological and life-history trait differences between resident and disperser phenotypes is synthetized. In a last part, the effects of range expansion on dispersal traits and performance is examined, in particular for insects from range edges and invasion fronts. Finally, some research perspectives are proposed in the last part of the review.
Highlights
Dispersal is the movement of individuals or populations from the natal or breeding habitat to another breeding habitat [4,5]
This type of animal movement is of particular importance for the stabilization of population demography and dynamics, by balancing the departure of individuals with arrival of other conspecifics
In a recent review on partial migration of insects, many of the examples used by the authors correspond to dispersal [54], an aspect that the authors recognized themselves (“Other movement ecology researchers might categorize some of the examples we provide in our review as dispersal instead of migration”); this suggests that the definition of migration in entomological studies is not yet clearly fixed
Summary
Dispersal is the movement of individuals or populations from the natal (natal or postnatal dispersal, see [1,2] for examples) or breeding (breeding dispersal, see [3] for example) habitat to another breeding habitat [4,5]. Maintaining high dispersal capacity performance can be costly for individuals, and dispersal should be advantageous if benefits (increased fitness of the individual) in the new breeding habitat exceed the costs resulting from dispersal, conferring a selective advantage [22] (reviewed in Bonte et al [28]; but see Hamilton and May [29] who suggested that benefits could be null for dispersing individuals, and only in favor of residents). Dispersal is increasingly studied in the context of range-expanding insects, including biological invasions, and there is supporting evidence that spatial sorting may contribute to selecting dispersive phenotypes at the front distribution margins. The knowledge of these ecological differences, possibly related to enhanced dispersal capacities at range edges, is discussed in a fourth part
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